Nehemiah calls one of the priests, and inquires the meaning of this extraordinary change in the building.  He is told, to his horror, that this grand reception room has actually been made for the use and convenience of Tobiah the secretary.  Tobiah the heathen, Tobiah, who had mocked them as they built the walls, and who had done all that was in his power ever since to annoy and to hinder Nehemiah and his helpers.  This splendid apartment has actually been made and fitted up, in order that Tobiah may have a grand place in which to dwell, and in which to entertain his friends whenever he chooses to pay a visit to Jerusalem.

What an abominable thing is this, which the poor governor has discovered!  For was not this Tobiah an Ammonite, a Gentile? and as such Nehemiah knew perfectly well he had no right to set his foot in the Court of the Women, or the Court of Israel; much less then had he the right to enter the temple building.

Where is Eliashib the high priest?  How is it that he has not put a stop to this proceeding?  Nehemiah finds, to his dismay, that Eliashib has actually been the very one who has had this chamber prepared.  The very man who was responsible for the temple, and who had, by his office, the right and the power to shut out from the holy building all that was evil, had been the man to introduce Tobiah the heathen, with marked honour, into the temple itself.

Eliashib had begun well.  Earnestly and heartily he had helped in building the walls; he had actually led the band of workers, and had been the very first to begin to build, chap. iii. 1.

But Eliashib had a grandson named Manasseh, and this young man had made what he thought a very good match.  Priest though he was, he had married the daughter of Sanballat, the governor of Samaria, a heathen girl, who was rich and possibly good-looking, and whose father was the most powerful man in the country, but who did not fear or own the God of Israel.  And the grandfather, so far from forbidding the marriage, seems to have connived at it and sanctioned it.

Nay, he seems not only to have allowed himself to be allied with Sanballat the governor, but also with Tobiah the secretary, chap. xiii. 4.  In what way he was connected by marriage we are not told, but inasmuch as both Tobiah and his son had married Jewish wives, one or both of these may have been closely related to the high priest, chap. vi. 17, 18.  So the friendship with the Samaritans had grown; Eliashib had probably visited Samaria, and had been made much of and royally entertained by Sanballat and his secretary; and in proportion as his friendship with the heathen had grown warm, his love and earnestness in the Lord’s service had grown cold.

In the latter part of the Book of Nehemiah we never find Eliashib coming forward as a helper in any good work.  Ezra stands in the huge pulpit to read the law of God, thirteen of the chief men in Jerusalem stand by him to help him, but Eliashib the high priest, who surely should have been well to the front in that pulpit, is conspicuous by his absence.  How could he stand up and read the law to the people, when he knew, and they knew, that he was not keeping it himself?